one question
by maevestrom
Summary: "Are you happy now?" Libra is not sure he can answer without shame and longing, even in his own fever dreams.


"Are you happy?"

There's nothing. Libra does not know where he is. The surroundings are the dimming of light- fluorescent, sterile, unnatural. He is possessed by the inauthenticity of it all. He's not in reality but he can't wake up.

The priest tries to shout, but he cannot hear himself. He cannot even feel his voice scrape the back of his throat. The only concept available to him is the light and the memory of the voice.

"Are you happy?" repeats through wherever his mind is.

He doesn't have an answer.

His eyes do not move. He is not a corporeal being. The only memory he has is of a woman's muddled voice saying words he does not know, and words that are more formed than spoken: "Are you happy?"

The only thing he can feel is a deep sense of remorse.

It carries him into sleep.

* * *

He remembers the knight.

The idea of her is all he has but it claims his mind. The knight wears gray pants and red wool sweater with pinstripe etches and short sleeves that show off her prominent muscles and coffee-bean-brown skin. He hears her laugh- sharp, husky, and chuffed. Her hair is short and messy, a rust red that rests above her ears. She is nowhere; there is no land to be found. She doesn't look into his line of sight or seem to know he is there.

He stares at her in awe, a familiar yet foreign bubbling within his chest, an anxious yet excited twist in his gut. He isn't used to these feelings, as close to him as they may feel. He isn't supposed to know them, surely. Is this love? How could he know? He has never been in love. No one has ever been in love with him. Yet this knight… all he can sense within her is the draw of confirmed coupling… of conscious kinship…

The feeling consumes him so strongly that he falls unconscious again.

* * *

"Are you happy?"

Libra shoots awake at the sound.

"Are you happy?"

The voice is internal. Familiar, but he finds it hard to explain why. It's imagined, and Libra knows it, so says nothing, chalking it up to the dregs of his dreams.

The priest assesses his surroundings. He's in a bed underneath feather blankets within the muted blue bricks of the Ylissean castles. Daylight shines through a perfect row of open arched windows that reveal a garden he can see the stalks of sunflowers and the content spraying of a fountain in. He sighs and doesn't feel any compulsion to get up. He doesn't want to turn his head. He just wants to see things.

"Are you happy?"

He doesn't feel any compulsion to answer the voice inside his head either. He's long been used to demons, even if they do not so clearly manifest. He can't feel anything- not the layered comfort of the down enveloping him, not the radiance of the fountain water or chilly breeze through the window. Even his own body- whether it be heated by fever, or frozen in paralysis- was naught more than a specter. Distantly, he recognizes it as abnormal, but natural all the same.

"Look around."

Libra cries out in shock. The voice is no longer in him, but manifested to his left. He closes his eyes, overcome by fear. Fear, the only emotion that he has ever known. He feels himself shaking- _feels_. The sensation is so wrong, it's a failure, and it feels more honest than his other failures- which frightens him all the more.

The demon inside of him has escaped his body.

"Stop," he pleads, like a child begging for life under the vicious gaze of a robber, hand on his collar, no soul in his eyes, the vision of everything Libra preaches to prevent.

"Stop, please, and leave me be. I've done nothing to you. I'm nothing to you. I'm nothing."

"Libra."

The voice is calm now. Libra can't stop shaking.

"Libra."

Such caring. Such kindness.

Libra is consumed by matriarchy. It's an unfamiliar, but not unwelcome feeling.

"How do you know my name?"

"Libra."

A hand holds his shoulder. Libra screams and flinches away, slapping blindly at the spot as his hair consumes his face, hitting nothing.

A tinkling giggle envelops him in a warm hug.

"It's okay."

He accepts it and falls asleep in the arms of her laughter.

* * *

He remembers the knight.

He sees her on the edge of a cliff, just ahead of him. She's wearing a black summer dress with small straps in the space between her neck and shoulders, freeing prominent muscles and coffee-bean-brown skin. Wearing a dress is very unlike her, but she sports it with commendable confidence that he always knew her to have. It is _her, _even if Libra is not sure how _her _that the knight is.

Libra walks to join her, but he does not move. He sees himself, same ornate white robes as ever, as he walks in a rehearsed, poised manner to take a seat near her. He watches as he folds his legs underneath him, bare feet sticking out behind him like a tail. He is handsome and princelike, golden hair down to his feet, posture perfect.

The knight says something. He can't hear it but in his head words form and leave just as suddenly. He hears his own words in response, but only the tone- devoid of individuality as ever. She responds, her words garbled and lucid all at once. The two talk some more, and as they do, her tone gets more frustrated, and Libra feels that he has disappointed her.

He thinks an apology. He does not know if he has apologized to her.

Her words are muddled, then clear, as though his ears popped. "Talked to her?"

Instinctively, Libra thinks "No."

The knight slumps his shoulders. She is sad for Libra. Some of her words are still garbled, but he can start to piece them together. "A big deal for you! This…" They're gone again. "Whole fucking life led to this, Leebs." The knight always did have the foulest mouth. He feels himself blush and sees himself scratch his neck.

He apologizes again.

"Don't apologize to me."

"She's the divine voice, a vessel of the gods. I'm simply not worthy to talk to her."

"The hell you are!"

Her roar forces him to close his eyes. The knight and priest disappear. There's no sound but their jagged breaths until she speaks again. He doesn't make it out until she sheepishly says "be selfish for a change, that's all I'm saying".

Once he processes it, everything goes black and he's unconscious.

* * *

"Are you happy?"

As she says the words, Libra can see her again. She is in a field of dead grass, fruitless trees surrounding her. Libra looks around. It is not winter or fall, or any season really. The lifelessness of the clearing is innate to him for no defined reason. It is not worth assessing like she is.

She wears a flawless red gown down to her knees over sand-scarred tan skin. The gown gifts her chest an impressive amount of cleavage before hanging onto the same part of her shoulders that the knight wore hers on. Green hair freshly free of a ponytail drops wildly to her waist, gracelessly carved out by split ends and sloppy handiwork. Her ears are pointed and her eyes are curious. Her expression is somewhere between pitying and endlessly loving.

"You've never talked to me," she says with bemused sorrow. "It is always Naga. Never me."

"Divine Voice Tiki!"

Libra falls onto his knees before the voice of the goddess Naga. The dirt presses callouses into his skin as he bows to her. Tiki giggles, and Libra hears her flop on some form of cushion. As he opens his eyes, Tiki meets them, at his level. He falls against one of the dead trees, feeling a distant pain in his back.

She giggles again. "Libra," she breathes in awe, enveloping the surroundings in her affection.

"My lady," Libra says. Looking at himself, he is ashamed of how unholy he looks, wearing a white form-fitting gown barely reaching below his own waist that betrays him, reducing his years to that of a child.

Tiki smiles warmly, but the sorrow is there. "I know you," she says.

"You do?"

Tiki nods.

"Yet…" Libra is silent for a few moments, suddenly embarrassed. Tiki does not speak, her eyes on his skin even after he turns away in a heated flush. He doesn't dare meet her eyes. He feels unworthy to even ask if she is fond of him; she, a divine being, does not deserve to think well of a demon- even if he wishes that were the case.

The silence bears heavily on the clearing until she giggles. "I do," she confirms to the thoughts he had tried and failed to push from his mind.

Libra bows again, tears in his eyes.

"You needn't do that," she chides him.

"I'm so sorry."

Tiki reaches for him to pull him into a hug. As her arms touch his back, he stiffens, too humble to reject her but too unhinged to accept. He feels the enveloping presence of Tiki distance from him. He feels cold, his body finally embracing every feeling it did not before. He is lonely, sorrowful, and regretful that he provoked her to leave, but he knows it's exactly what he deserves.

"Why are you so sorrowful?" Tiki asks, not looking upon his pitiful self.

"I am a demon," he says plainly.

She shakes her head. "You are _not _a demon."

"I _am_," he insists.

She chuckles. "I can see into you, Libra. I can see your intent. I can see your heart."

"You see the heart of a demon," Libra growls.

She shakes her head, and Libra is angry. "How can you deny it?!" he barks, louder than he has been in his life. Louder than his most fervent prayers. Louder than his most guttural battle cry. Louder than he screamed for his parents after they abandoned him, the fresh scar on his neck stinging with agony and loneliness. "Are you blind or are you simply ignorant? The man in front of you is a demon! He is a mistake! How could…"

He crumples, immediately guilty. He cries into his knees, wrapping his arms around them, because no one has ever loved him enough to embrace him themselves. _No… _he has never _let_ someone love him that much.

He cries and cries, too consumed by sobs to even apologize to Tiki. His cries are bitter, pained, and remorseful for having been born a demon. As he weeps, the surroundings, a mere backdrop from the start, disappear. It is simply Tiki and him.

Tiki gingerly sets a hand on his back. Libra does not bother to shake it off. He still doesn't have the words to apologize.

"I forgive you," she coos. "My lovely child."

Libra shakes his head. He does not deserve her forgiveness. Demons don't deserve the love she is showing to him.

"You are not a demon," she insists, "and I love you very, very much. And if you were a demon, I would love you all the same."

Libra cannot accept that yet.

"Over time," she assures him. "Over time, you will accept that you are worthy of love."

Libra feels Tiki's arms wrap around him once more, and he allows it, crying into her hair, apologizing for everything. She strokes his own locks, long and golden, and simply whispers "my beautiful Libra. My beautiful, kind, loyal, tenacious young boy. I am so proud of you."

The words are a lullaby, a trance that takes him back to sleep.

* * *

He remembers the knight.

They're in the confines of a cabin. There's not much in it other than a wooden bench, fireplace, bed, and small altar space. She's on the bench next to him, wearing a gray sweater that hides her prominent muscles and thick pants that conceal her coffee bean brown skin. Her rust red hair tickles the side of his cheek whenever she leans on his shoulder, always pushing herself away when he looks at her.

Now he sees her face. Her eyes are as red and powerful as a fire, perky tan freckles along the bridge of her broad nose, her mouth pursed and thoughtful in every expression. She raises an eyebrow with playful curiosity, smiling with warmth and reservation. The familiarity of it all hits Libra, and he is so grateful that the look on her face is reserved for him.

"Hello, Sully," he says.

"Hello yourself," she responds.

He looks at her, warmth filling his heart. He can feel everything- the distant heat of the fire crackling in the fireplace, the creaky stability of the wooden bench beneath them, the enveloping coziness of secure clothes over his body topped by a patternless white blanket that he hands the edges of to the woman.

"You sure, Leebs?"

"I'm positive."

Sully takes it with a smile. "Thanks, handsome."

He beams. He feels love for her more than anything.

"So everything…" she starts before sighing. "Everything's a big fuckin' mess, innit?"

"How so?" Conversation is natural with Sully, even though he doesn't know what it's about.

She shrugs. "I mean, all I remember is a flash of white and we're here." Looking around _here, _she decides "nice place we have here."

Libra doesn't dare close his eyes, but he is exhausted. "Am I still not awake?"

She shakes her head. "Afraid not. But it's…" She closes her own eyes, and Libra is scared she'll disappear into unconsciousness until she opens them again. "It's nice. Think I wanna stay here."

Libra nods. "Myself as well."

It's quiet for a minute. The two sit on the bench together. Libra commits the place to memory. The bed and its lumpy mattress. The iron oven with a pipe stretching out of the chimney that acts as the fireplace. The small altar set up with worn-in knee-prints that aren't level with the wooden floor. As he looks at them, he defines them more. He finds artwork on the walls of idyllic fields and of bustling castles, no place looking isolated. Above the altar is a drawing of a crystalline dragon with kindness in her eyes- one he drew himself.

She notices the drawing. "You two have a good talk?"

Libra nods. "She is… very kind."

She nods in turn. "Just gotta do it outta here now."

Libra grabs the edge of the bench, worried Sully will make it disappear. The worst dreams always end when they're acknowledged, and the best dreams end before he gets what he wants. As he remains, he deduces that this must not be the type of dream his subconscious would save him from.

She starts to lean on his shoulder but stops in the air. "Shit, shit, I'm sorry," she blurts with a shallow sense of failure in her words. Embarrassed, she adds "Forgot you're not a touchy-feely person."

Maybe he's not, but it's a dream, so he's okay with it. He beckons her over, and she flops on his side, nearly knocking him off the side with her force. "Shit, sorry!" she shouts. "Not tryna kill ya." After a second, she says "Or wake ya up."

He smiles. "Quite all right."

"I'm not, like… experienced at this sort of thing," Sully confesses.

"Neither am I," he assures her.

"Well, duh."

He beams. Even her teasing feels familiar.

"Thanks, by the way."

He looks at Sully. She's curled up beneath the blanket on the couch, head just below his neck. She's dangerously close to the scar there but she is so soft despite her roughness that he doesn't mind. She's always gentle around him. Her bare feet just barely stick out from beneath the blanket.

"What for?" he asks.

Sully doesn't respond, thinking of her words carefully. That is very unlike her to do. Libra gazes at her with concern, but patience was always his strong suit. Finally, she asks "Is this really what you think of me?"

He nods. "Ever since we got to know each other."

"We've been friends for a while," she says. "And this… the whole time?"

"The whole time," he says, unashamed.

She snorts. "You're gonna give her the shock of her life."

Libra rankles his brow. This is the first time she has announced that she is not really the woman she loves. Rolling with it, he asks "Am I not so transparent that you have yet to notice me?" being sure to address her as the same being as the one out there.

Sully recognizes this. "Leebs, I'm oblivious as fuck. You know this. I'm useless and you're hopeless. Except here, where I'm…" She gestures to the space around her and laughs with a bark "Hell, I would want me too."

Libra chuckles lowly. "I assure you, nothing is different than the woman I know."

Her cheeks flush. Libra can feel her heat on his neck near the scar. He is unholy, and she is regal, and he loves her so. Fire in her eyes brighter than that in the fire, she says "Libra, look at me. Take me in. Okay?"

Libra does. Red eyes, red hair, freckles on her nose, prominent muscles, coffee bean brown skin, radiant smile. "I think I have."

The smile turns into a stubborn frown. "No, I mean, really do it, damn it."

"Really do it?"

"You know what I mean," she says. "Tell me everything you see."

"I shouldn't," Libra admits, eyes downcast. "I fear I may look mad."

"No, Leebs, you're gonna tell me _everything,_" she orders, face red from anger.

"Everything?" Libra repeats, still unnerved.

Sully's face turns a different shade of red. She closes her eyes.

"Please," she breathes.

So he does.

He tells Sully about the language of hers that would make his fellow priests blush. Her delivery, her enunciation, and how all of her words fall into just the right places. Her strength, tenacity, and stubbornness he has not been able to penetrate once since they met. Her energy, her effortless fight, and how nothing she does seems rehearsed as he himself does as a defense mechanism. Her constant jubilance at everything remotely positive and draw to anger at anything remotely negative that makes a constant neutral at him come alive.

Her gentle touches that he is okay with, and the way that she reads his body language that he doesn't know he puts out. How she hears what he lets slip through his defenses like letters from the sky and doesn't judge how even the smallest pieces of his heart are so hard to give her, just clapping his back, helping him up, and thanking him for telling her. How she calls him her closest friend. How she calls _him _her closest friend.

He tells Sully of her red eyes, red hair, freckles on her nose, prominent muscles, coffee bean brown skin, radiant smile, and the way that she snorts when she laughs. He never tells her how much he loves her, but the words are not needed when they are felt.

After Libra stops speaking, Sully simply says "Tell her."

Libra blanches. "All of that? But- I- Sully!"

"Nah, not all of that, we ain't got a year," she drawls. Libra tries not to be annoyed at her irreverence but is failing. "And… I think all of it at once… might be a little much for her mind." She busts out her idiosyncratic cackle with a snort in the middle, and the clouds on Libra's heart clear. "Just... tell her something, Leebs."

Libra tries to form words. It sounds like cries of pain with a few fragments mixed in. Him? Tell her? What if it goes wrong? He has naught a confession to his name in his twenty-nine years. He has not loved before. Why should he? He has not lived a life that has drawn out love and certainly not one that deserves it. He's a demon. A-

"It doesn't matter," she hisses, cutting off his thoughts. "If I'm really everything you say I am… I'm gonna love you too, no matter what."

Libra closes his eyes out of fear. No, she can't be right. No one loves him, No one could. He's not worthy. He was born a demon. He was born wrong. He was-

"Open your eyes," she orders.

Libra forces them open, too shy to return her gaze.

"Sometimes it's okay to be selfish for a change, that's all I'm saying."

Libra nods as if to work on convincing himself. It's the most honest he has ever been with himself.

She leans her face towards his, eyes closed, and then he's gone before he can return the kiss.

* * *

"Are you happy?"

Libra thinks.

"No," he admits.

The voice _hmms_, sorrowful yet understanding.

"What is it that you want?"

Libra doesn't have to think.

"I would like to stop being paralyzed."

The voice _ahhs_, proud and content.

"This is not what I expected. But you were always the humble one."

Then a whisper: "Fear not. You'll earn your own happiness soon."

Then everything is gone.

* * *

He remembers Sully.

He recognizes her in a tent he deduces is on the edge of the battlefield he was on before all of this. She's wearing her signature scuffed red-and-silver armor that accents her rust red hair and fire red eyes. There is blood on her coffee bean brown skin and scars on her prominent muscles that tear open skin. She looks at him with both relief and concern, their eyes meeting.

He struggles to move without dull pain. Occasionally, electricity violates his body, but the tremors always subside. He notices that his robes have been moved to expose his abdomen, the puncture wound of a thoron just below his gut. If it weren't for swift and immediate healing magic, he would have died. Being wounded is a blessing at all.

Sully finally speaks, uninhibitedly terrified. "Leebs?"

He's awake.

"Hello, Sully," he breathes, voice hollow and weak, but absolutely there.

Her name feels more familiar than his own.

"Oh, thank fuck," she whispers. Libra sees tears in her eyes and love in her heart.

He accepts when she embraces him, crying into his skin, arms around his neck where they meet to softly caress the scar that she does not know is there. Life does not transform into another dream Even though his body is numb, it is awake.

"I'm so fucking happy you're here," she says, jagged sobs echoing in his ears closer than anything he has ever felt.

He doesn't have the strength for words, but he's happy he's here too.

* * *

"_Are you happy?" _

Libra can't pray. Not without Tiki's voice in his head. He only wishes he hadn't kneeled- it's very arduous with the pain in his gut, especially in the uneven grounds of a nearby forest that keeps dropping dead leaves into his hair. He tries again to pray since he's already on his knees, but he's distracted heavily by being repeatedly asked a question he already answered.

He thought the dream was over two weeks ago. He didn't expect so much of it to follow him into his waking hours; yet, the part he worked to memorize is not there. Sometimes he remembers an altar, a white blanket, a painting he never made, but they fade away into fantasy and leave him with a feeling of comfort.

He supposes that's all he was meant to take from it.

With a grunt and cry of pain, Libra forces himself up. He tries to stand, but his feet are shaky, so he kneels before he falls again. He holds one finger out, and tries to push himself up, but only succeeds in hoisting himself the other way onto his bottom. He seethes, flushed with embarrassment, and tries to orient himself.

"Naga, I don't wanna have to watch you flop around all day," a voice from behind him says. He recognizes Sully, and allows the knight to pull him to his feet, where he gasps and groans but settles, looking into her fire eyes with an awkward smile.

"Fuckin' stubborn-ass men," she says with a scowl.

He giggles at the teasing. "You're one to talk about stubbornness."

Before she can help herself, she cackles with a snort. "Har! Got me there!" Then, as Libra tries to find his balance, she holds her arm out towards him, smiling shyly. Even though both of them know he needs her to help him walk cleanly, she's surprised every time he takes her arm.

Probably because he's letting someone else help him.

The two walk through the forest towards the temporary base camp. Rays of light intermittently shine on them both as they follow a cleared pathway.

She's quick to the point. "Couldn't get any praying done?"

He shakes his head. "Too much on my mind."

"I've never seen it stop you from praying."

"You'd be surprised," he admits. "I am only human, after all."

Sully looks at him with a knowing grin. "A step up from demon, at least."

Libra blushes. She's got him there, but he lets the acknowledgment pass with a sly grin. In response, Sully's grin could swallow the world.

As they break into a clearing, they see the tents that make up their camp. They're a ways away from home, but Libra admits that it makes no difference. The light illuminating his path is the same in Valm or Ylisse.

Sully points at something in the distance. "Wait, hold up. Leebs-"

Libra follows her finger to see the Divine Voice herself walk towards him, in between tents. Tiki's hair is in a ponytail, her dress is shorter and less refined, and there is an apple in one of her sand-scarred hands. Libra can't run without hurting himself and being quite the fool, but it's okay. He knows her in his own way.

He starts a bow but gets a sharp pain in his gut telling him not to. As if to accent it, Sully says "Dumb-arse."

Ignoring her, Libra says "Divine Voice Tiki. I'm honored to meet you."

Tiki smiles warmly. "Libra," she says, voice full of wonder and motherly love. "I trust that you are happier now?"

Libra closes his eyes and nods. It's not enough, but it's a start.


End file.
